Medication Errors Occur In Close To Half Of All Surgeries

New findings published in the journal Anesthesiology reveal that a mistake occurs in one out of every two surgeries.

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital found that 124 of the 277 surgeries examined had at least one medication error or adverse drug event either before, during or after a surgical procedure--with up to 80 percent of the mistakes preventable. 

Mistakes ranged from labeling errors and drug documentation mistakes to incorrect dosages of medications and/or failing to properly treat changes in the patient during surgery, according to Health Day.

"While the frequency of errors and adverse events is much higher than has previously been reported in perioperative settings, it is actually in line with rates found in inpatient wards and outpatient clinics, where error rates have been systematically measured for many years," said study author Dr. Karen Nanji, an assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School in Boston, in a news release. "We definitely have room for improvement in preventing perioperative medication errors, and now that we understand the types of errors that are being made and their frequencies, we can begin to develop targeted strategies to prevent them."

During the study, researchers observed 225 hospital anesthesia providers throughout 277 operations in 2013 and 2014. They also took into account patient history, information from the hospital's management system and other data regarding the observed mistakes.

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